


Reunion

by wordsrising



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Feels, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Past Violence, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23560867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsrising/pseuds/wordsrising
Summary: Ametrine stopped expecting kindness from the gods a long time ago. Maybe that's why they've chosen to show her kindness now.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Reunion

“Ametrine?”  
  
There were many, many voices in Ametrine’s past; the vast majority were ones she had no desire to ever hear again.  
  
This was not one of those voices.  
  
She set down the egg she’d been inspecting, half because she was naturally careful of her charges and half because she feared finding she was mistaken. She breathed in deep, held it a moment.  
  
Exhaled.  
  
Turned around.  
  
“Excidium?”  
  
The Imperial towering over her seemed frozen, staring at her with an unwavering intensity that perhaps she should have found frightening. But she knew that face and those eyes, and she knew full well what kind of stares should be feared. All she felt under that dark red gaze was relief.  
  
“You survived,” she said. A statement of the obvious, a plea for confirmation, because she had not dared to hope he might, after-  
  
After.  
  
“The mirror of my thoughts,” Excidium rumbled. “I found only graves.”  
  
Ametrine sighed, shuffling closer. “We owed them that much dignity,” she said. “But we couldn't stay. _I_ couldn’t stay. Not without you. Not without our nest.”  
  
He lowered his head and she reached up to lay her claws on his snout. It was encased in metal, dark and gleaming, running up his jaw and spreading into sparking fins that shimmered with crawling lightning. He had survived, but not unscathed. She closed her eyes, resting her crest against the framework, the tingle of electricity shocking along ancient memories.  
  
He circled her, drawing her close against his bulk, crowding her in with chrome-tipped wings. “Forgive me. I tried-”  
  
“Shh,” she interrupted, letting him take the weight of her battered body and tattered wings. “I know. I know.”  
  
“I tried,” he whispered, half to her and half to himself.  
  
“I know,” she repeated.  
  
Distantly, at a vast remove from herself, she heard the bustle of the nesting grounds around them. It mingled unpleasantly with older sounds, ones best forgotten yet impossible to forget: screams and war cries and Excidium roaring in pain and the wet muffled crunch of smashing eggs.  
  
Excidium had tried to protect her, to protect their nest. She had thought he’d died trying. Evidently, he had thought he’d survived failing. His guilt must be an even match for her own.  
  
How cruel the gods could be.  
  
She couldn’t say how long they stayed like that, lost in the familiar comfort of each other, before the gentle scrape of claw against rock came close enough to draw them back to the present.  
  
Aine stood just beyond Excidium’s coils, armor gleaming brightly in the sun, green eyes calm and patient. Nothing in her posture spoke of reproach or disapproval. “A friend?” she asked, once she was certain she had been noticed.  
  
Ametrine nodded. “An old one,” she said, drawing slightly away with reluctance. “Forgive u-”  
  
“Nonsense.” Aine’s voice, strong and vibrant and commanding, overrode the soft rasp that was all Ametrine could produce these days. “Go. Be together in peace. I have your watch.”  
  
Part of Ametrine wanted to argue, simply because she didn’t want to seem as though she were selfishly abandoning the nest in her care. But leaving a nest in Aine’s claws was hardly abandoning it, and she had relearned in her time here that wanting was not in and of itself selfishness.  
  
Instead of protesting, she nodded again and extracted herself carefully from Excidium’s embrace. “Thank you.”  
  
Aine waved a foreclaw dismissively and turned away, and Ametrine smiled at the back of her glorious golden wings.  
  
“Have you chosen a den in the Hall?” she asked, stepping back to allow Excidium to climb to his feet.  
  
“Yes. Shall we go there?”  
  
“Please.” They had so much to discuss, so many blanks to fill for each other. Some much lost time to balance.  
  
Excidium spread his great wings, crouching, but paused when Ametrine laid a claw on his foreleg.  
  
“I can no longer fly,” she informed him.  
  
After all this time, the pang of loss was faint. When she’d first lost the skies along with everything that made the ground bearable, she had been so broken she’d longed for death; now, though she still grieved, it was a distant grief, a soft and muffled hurt that was easily pushed aside.  
  
Excidium, freshly aware, stared at her once more, stricken. But he was strong and kind, and freed himself of his shock in short order. He crouched lower, until his chest rested against the ground, and swept his nearer wing back.  
  
“It would be my honor,” he said softly, “to convey you.”  
  
She placed her claw on his shoulder; he dipped it lower still for her, allowed her to climb carefully into the space between his wings and settle there, to tangle her foreclaws in the shaded blush of his mane.  
  
Excidium shifted beneath her, spreading his wings, and leapt upward. Ametrine resisted the urge to close her eyes and to open her wings, and it was not at all like flying for herself, but it was enough.  
  
It was more than enough.  
  
The gods were rarely kind to Ametrine, but today they had given back one of the few parts of her past worth reclaiming and returned her, for a moment, to the skies. For that, she could only be thankful.


End file.
